Thursday photo #324

With the school summer holidays finally here, it is a strange feeling that nothing has changed. My husband took the day off on Monday and we had a lovely day out with friends. We even saw a kingfisher while we ate our picnic by a stream. Since then though, we have pretty much carried on where we left off last week. Lia isn’t in school, I’m not doing schoolwork in the mornings with Libby but those are the only changes. It is a far cry from our usual start to school holidays where we pack the van and head to the Nozstock festival. Then, we embark on a plethora of days out holidays for most of the summer.

A change of plan

The one thing that has changed over the past week is our holiday plan. We had been hoping to go to the Orkney Islands for a couple of weeks, but that hasn’t worked out. Things we wanted to see including Tomb of the Eagles and Skara Brae remain closed. The campsite we’d booked hasn’t decided whether it will be reopening and we were worried that if we waited any longer, we would be too late to book somewhere else.

So instead, we’ll be heading back to an area we enjoyed visiting last Summer. We’re spending a week near the east coast of Scotland in our van. It’s a long drive but not as far as the Orkney’s and there’s plenty to do there. We’ll spend time on the beach, meet up with friends and do some wild swimming. I intend to carry on running every day too, and I know that doing so on holiday is going to be my biggest challenge yet. Having the dog there will help though, she is a great motivator.

The end of an era

When I bought my house 17 years ago, my dad lived across the road in a beautiful, big house he’d built himself. At the time, my brother and sisters were all children and living over the road gave me the opportunity to see them a lot while they were growing up. They all lived there on and off as adults too and it was great to be able to pop over and see them for a coffee or a glass of wine. It has been lovely for my children to grow up with their grandad, aunts and uncles around too.

As my brothers and sisters all grew up and moved on, dad eventually put his house up for sale. That was quite a while ago now and the sale has dragged on and on, most recently with the pandemic preventing them from moving. Yesterday though, the sale completed and off they went. They haven’t moved far, but we’ll have to drive to go and see them rather than popping across the road. It’s the end of the era and the start of the new one. I hope they will be happy in their new home.

Thursday photo #324

Lia won a little award on Friday in recognition of how hard she has worked at school this year. It was the attainment award for reading and I was so pleased for her because she really deserved it. At the start of year one, she was struggling her way through easy books. Progress was slow until Christmas, when something suddenly clicked. Now, she is happy to read chapter books both to us and to herself. Harry Potter, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Faraway Tree and anything else we put in front of her. The reward for winning was an Amazon voucher and of course, she is going to spend it on a book about horse riding. However good she gets at other things, this will always be her passion.